Tfhio - JScholarship - Johns Hopkins University

APOLOGETICVS 7 27
with the very offenders in his grasp ? If we are always in hiding,
when was the crime we commit betrayed ? nay rather, by whom
could it be betrayed ? Assuredly riot by the accused themselves,
since even according to rule all mysteries are bound to be loyally
concealed. Silence is preserved with regard to the mysteries of
Samothrace and Eleusis; how much more with regard to such
as if betrayed will sometimes even call forth human punishment,
while their divine character is preserved! unless therefore they
are themselves their own betrayers, it follows that the betrayers
must be outsiders. And, if so, whence do the outsiders obtain
the knowledge, since even rehgious initiations always exclude
the profane and take precautions against the presence of eyewitnesses,
unless it be that the impious are bolder than others ?
The nature of rumour is known to all. One of your (own)
writers says: 'Rumour, than which no other evil is swifter.'
Why is rumour an evil? because it is swift? because it gives
information ? or is it because it is very often lying ? Even
when it brings some truth with it, it is not exempt from
the flaw of falsehood, as it takes away from, adds to, and
alters the truth. What are we to say of the fact that its
character is such that it does not persist without lying and
it lives only as long as it cannot prove its truth; since when it
has proved it, it ceases to exist and as though it had done its
work of reporting hands down the matter, and thereafter it is
held to be fact, and is so called. Nor does anyone for example,
remark: ' They say this has happened at Rome,' or ' The rumour
is that he has obtained the province (by lot),' but 'He has
obtained the province,' and:—'This has happened at Rome.'
Rumour, a name belonging to uncertainty, has no place where
certainty exists. Would anyone indeed, unless he were devoid
of sense, beheve rumour ? A wise man does not trust what- is
uncertain. Anyone can judge that, however great may be the
extent to which the story is spread, however great the confidence
with which it has been built up, still it must have sprung at
some time or other from a single root. From that it creeps
into the branches of tongues and ears. And a fault in the
httle seed is so concealed by the shield^ of rumour, that no one
reflects whether that first.mouth may not have sown the he,
a thing that often happens either through the inventiveness of
jealousy or the humour of suspicion or the pleasure in lying,
which is not new but inborn in some people. It is a good thing
that tiniie reveals everything, as even your proverbs and maxims
testify, by the arrangement of nature, which has so ordered it
that nothing is concealed for long, even that which rumour has
^ Beading caetra with Schrors.